The Sword: Spaced-Out Texas Boogie Metal

One of rock’s great traditions—and paradoxes—is the band that revisits its roots in order
to evolve. That isn’t to say the Sword have
become Dylan holing up in Woodstock to
make John Wesley Harding. But Warp Riders,
the third album by these heavy merchants
from Austin, Texas, finds the Sword indulging
a subtle, but distinctly Texas-flavored sense
of groove and swing. This deep-seeded part
of the band’s DNA is helping guitarists J.D.
Cronise and Kyle Shutt break even further
away from metal convention and carve out a
unique domain among modern heavy rockers.

The Sword were never easily lumped in with the
modern metal pack. In the seven years since
the band came together, they’ve become one
of the standard bearers for a stylistically diverse
and loosely affiliated society of metal-influenced
bands. Along with Witch, High on Fire, and
Priestess, the Sword eschews many of metal’s
more aggro, cliché, and consciously flash elements
and instead look to Black Sabbath’s chugging
riffery and Grand Funk’s and Thin Lizzy’s
backbeat-driven grooves—as well as the more
melodically raging sounds of the New Wave of
British Heavy Metal—to create a more soulful
metal/heavy-rock hybrid.

Warp Riders is a hard-hitting refinement of
that heady brew. Wrapped around a sci-fi tale
(in part about a planet with one hemisphere
locked in perpetual darkness), the album also
links the Sword to a narrative tradition that
runs from the Who’s Tommy to Rush’s 2112
and even Hüsker Dü’s pop-hardcore classic,
Zen Arcade. Warp Riders doesn’t disregard
the band’s metal roots entirely—not by a long
shot. But check out the hooks that propel
“Tres Brujas” (Three Witches)—not to mention
the nod to Texas’ favorite heavy boogie
kings in the song’s title—and it’s pretty clear
that the Sword may have been thinking as
much about tumbleweeds and greasy ribs as
whiplash thrashing and the black magic and
mystic herb invoked in the lyrics.

And so it goes over the course of Warp
Riders. Space trucking, vocal-based songs
like the title track and “Night City” give way
to full-throttle instrumentals like “Astraea’s
Dream,” replete with 64th-note runs and
pick-squealing savagery, before settling
back into thunderous grooves propelled by
Cronise and Shutt’s muscle-car riffery and the
thumping bass and drums of Bryan Richie and
Trivett Wingo.

Nods to Foghat and heavy boogie aren’t the
only deviations from metal dogma that set Warp
Riders apart. Lead singer Cronise’s rich tenor
vocals steer clear of the affectations that define
much of contemporary metal. And Cronise and
Shutt often opt for a restrained and economical
lead style that, while almost anathema to the
metal and heavy rock gospels, tip the cap to
Thin Lizzy’s Eric Bell and P-Funk’s Eddie Hazel.

On the day I interviewed the affable and articulate
Cronise and Shutt, the band were fresh
off a video shoot near Death Valley that left a
few of the crew hospitalized with heat stroke.
It doesn’t get much more heavy—or rock ’n’
roll—than that. And by all rights, the guitarists
should have been exhausted. But they were
still quite eager to talk about new directions,
hidden influences, and why the next record
may end up being death metal anyway.

Shutt, Cronise, and Wingo performing live at Waterloo Records and Video in Austin, Texas, August 23, 2010. Shutt is playing a Les Paul Custom, Cronise has his trusty 1979 Gibson Explorer II,
and a Laney head driving an Orange 4x12 cab is visible in the background. Photo by John Carrico

Did you make a conscious decision to
adhere to a story or make a concept album
early in the writing process?

Cronise: Compared to most concept records that
I know, it’s really more of a story record. Some
concept albums are just about a related subject,
in a general way. But this really tells a story.

Shutt: It’s almost a soundtrack to a story or a
rock opera, really.
Were you challenged to expand your guitar
textures to illuminate or tell the story?

Cronise: I stuck with what I’ve been using—
and my Orange amps are a big part of
that—but I tried to write rhythm parts that
were a little simpler and would come across
better in a live situation. But Kyle would play
a lot of insane solos to counter that and fill
things out.

Shutt: I think my natural growth as a musician
and curiosity for wanting to get different
sounds took care of that. I started using a
Tube Screamer for all my leads and threw in
a wah to give them a bit more variation. But
I didn’t really feel the need to do that for the
story’s sake. If it worked out that way, it’s just
a nice coincidence. The lyrics have always
been the last thing to come in a Sword
song, and in the case of this album, the story
that J.D. had in mind became the lyrics, so
the music was pretty well formed before it
evolved into the Warp Riders story.

How do you work out songs?

Shutt: Usually J.D. and I will just bring riffs to
practice. We’re pretty tight at this point, so
the song’s skeleton will usually come together
in one or two practices and take shape
from there. We spend a lot of time playing
things over and over again until we get bored
with the parts. Then they become new parts
and the song evolves that way. The good
stuff usually sticks. We keep working it until
every little screw is tightened and everything
is polished, and then you have a Sword song.

Gear Editor Charles Saufley is a career writer and editor from San Francisco. Before joining Premier Guitar he served as Associate Editor at Acoustic Guitar magazine (where his predecessor was esteemed PG Editor in Chief Shawn Hammond.) He became music obsessed not long after birth—thanks in no small part to older siblings who ‘babysat’ him with a set of headphones, Revolver, and Sticky Fingers. Charles still spends a lot of time listening to records. And his many git-fiddle heroes include Roger McGuinn, Pete Townshend, Tom Verlaine, Eddie Phillips, Nokie Edwards, Gabor Szabo, John Cippolina, Randy Holden, Erkin Koray, Greg Ginn, and Sonic Youth.

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